Eighty-five years ago this month, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. This amendment repealed the 18th Amendment which had banned alcohol in the United States for 13 long, dry years. It also gave rise to one of our country’s most successful policies: state regulation of alcohol and the birth of the three-tier system of alcohol distribution.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt even reportedly celebrated with a famous toast, “What America needs now is a drink.” However, he also acknowledged that policies were needed to protect the country from the Wild West of the unregulated alcohol market which existed before and during Prohibition and fueled crime, corruption, and widespread alcoholism. In his official proclamation ending Prohibition, Roosevelt wrote: “The policy of the Government will be to see to it that the social and political evils that have existed in the pre-prohibition era shall not be revived nor permitted again to exist.”